About the water, that keeps the city alive
You can see them almost everywhere in the city: Water towers. What’s the story behind them? And are they still in use?
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This can also be seen in the houses that are being built here. These are all the buildings with more than six floors - which is roughly equivalent to a height of 20 meters or more.
A special system is needed to supply these buildings with water, otherwise the water pressure would decrease from floor to floor or be too strong for the lower floors. And this is where the water towers come into play, which can be seen all over the city. Many of them are still in use - although the concept is over 150 years old.
For a long time the area around New York was very well known for its rich waterways, but as industry grew in the 1800s and the number of inhabitants was increasing, the sanitary conditions got worse.
In 1864, The Citizens Association of New York was founded by a group of wealthy New Yorker's with one mission: Access to fresh, clean water for everyone. At this time over 800.000 people lived in the city.
The first one was the Highbridge Water Tower, which was built from 1866 to 1872. Today it is no longer in service as part of the City’s aqueduct system. But since 2021 - after years of restoring – it is open to public again.
Today up to 6.000 water towers are scattered throughout NYC – around 4.800 just in Manhattan. The upper layer of water is still used for everyday use, but the water they hold is also used to help extinguish fires when necessary. About 5,000 to 10,000 gallons of water can be stored in the tanks it takes two to three hours to fill it.
The water tower business has been largely in the hands of three companies for over a hundred years: Iseeks Bros, Rosenwach and American Pipe and Tank were the first companies to build and service water towers at the end of the 19th century - and they continue to do so today.
Since 2015, building owners have their water towers inspected once a year. These inspections are carried out by many different companies - but New Yorkers apparently still trust the long-established family businesses. Out of 20,000 inspections since 2015, up to 90 percent have been carried out by these three companies.
However, it is not so clear how accurate these checks are carried out. Here you can see how many towers have been inspected at least once since 2015.
Compared with the buildings that are higher than 6 floors, it becomes clear that there must be some water towers in the city that have never been inspected so far.
